Korean girl's summer

These days, a Korean girl's post has been spreading like wildfire on social media.

The gist is: this is the best summer of her adult life—she found a job, threw all her salary into the stock market, bet on the most crowded sector right now, and her account multiplied several times. Air tickets are discounted everywhere, and saving a week's salary is enough to fly to an island. People on the streets of Seoul stop to hug and cheer. "It feels like living in a golden age."

Most people who saw it felt FOMO, but I sneered.

I've read "Dream of the Red Chamber" thoroughly and know the story of the Jia family's home visit. Imperial Consort Yuan visits, gold and silver pave the way, the fire is fierce, and flowers adorn the brocade. But the transition from peak prosperity to extreme decline often happens in an instant.

Isn't that exactly what South Korea is like now?

Consumption downgrading, index soaring, institutional herding, liquidity drying up, fools making money.

Putting these fragments together, what I see is not a golden age, but the end of a carnival. It's just that people are foolish, seeing only the revelry and not the end.

That girl thinks she's the protagonist, but she's actually the fuel.

I imagined her ending, which probably falls into one of these few categories:
 

The first, and the most dignified one:

She made that fivefold profit. She really bought a ticket and went to the island. She was playing with her phone on the beach when a pop-up notification told her the heavily weighted stock she held had hit the limit down.

She wasn't panicked; she thought it was a correction. After all, she'd never seen what a "liquidity squeeze" is.

By the time she got her tan and returned to work in her home country, her account had already been liquidated. More ironically, the company she worked for also went under. Not for any other reason, but because the boss, just like her, had leveraged up and bet on the same ship.

The streets were full of young people dragging suitcases as they resigned. She stopped talking, silently deleted the "golden age" screenshot, and returned to her "N-throw generation."

The second, a bit more tragic:

She didn't have time to run.

She watched her account go from fivefold to threefold, to break-even, to negative. Unwilling to accept it, she mortgaged her house, borrowed money, trying to win it back.

Then suddenly, there were no buyers for that "crowded sector."

She was still working overtime that day, checking the market in a toilet stall, her fingers trembling so much she couldn't press the sell button. Finally, with a "ding," the pop-up turned gray, showing a forced liquidation.

It was raining heavily in Seoul that day. When she walked out of the office building, she didn't hug anyone.

The third, the most ironic one:

She won. She really used that several-fold profit for a down payment, even changed her car, found a sk (presumably "skilled" or "successful") husband. She thought it was due to her good judgment, her good luck.

Then she put all her principal and profits back in—because those who have tasted fast money can no longer look at slow money.

She became the last person to foot the bill for that feast. What she bought was the illusion of a golden age.

I don't care which one she ends up as.

I only know that when "making money without understanding anything" becomes news, when even male-female relationships in Seoul start to ease up, the whole thing is just absurd.

All I can see are four words: the end of the carnival.

You guys keep sunbathing on the island.

When the tide goes out, we'll see who's crying and who's laughing.

Retail investors come and go, but Gu the God remains steadfast.

No matter which way the wind blows, I still sail against the current.

(Written on June 18, 2026)

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